


The Worth of Tears

by IvyLeigh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, some violence, villains in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 15:39:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15416172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyLeigh/pseuds/IvyLeigh
Summary: Vader's thoughts and memories of Lylla from the days before the Death Star is destroyed, and things he cannot bring himself to say to her.This is a companion piece to Dark Angel Unleashed, from Part I of The Chronicles of House Vader Series.





	The Worth of Tears

**Author's Note:**

> This is an HC that's been running through my head for a while. 
> 
>  
> 
> This is really just more-or-less a writing exercise to help me explore Vader’s thoughts and feelings for Lylla. I was VERY inspired by this piece on AO3:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280773
> 
> GREAT one-shot, very dark, and is a unique take on Vader’s inner life. I highly recommend it.
> 
> This is the first time I have ever written Vader in 1st person. Like I said, it’s really meant to be just an exercise, to help me build up some writing muscle. I’ve been feeling really stuck, unmotivated, and untalented recently. Writing a quick one-shot kinda helps me get my head right. It is NOT a finished product, just a drabble more or less.

I cause you pain. I do it because I love you. Your pain is delicious, euphoric, and I drink it like wine. Because I am the only one in the Galaxy who can cause you suffering now. No one else can, and no one else would dare. They would die by your hand, but more likely, they would die by mine. Your tears belong to me and me to only, my beautiful Lylla. My dragon, my bride, my dark angel. 

I knew it that day. I do not surprise easily, nuyak kranjen, but I did that day. When I sensed you in that hangar bay of the Death Star. For the briefest moment I thought I had sensed another Sith, for I had never felt such rage, such buried despair in another being save for myself. But then I looked down and saw you. You towered over everyone around you, in your worn, cheaply-made corset and your ragged cloak and another’s boots a size too small for you. Yes, I felt that pain too, as well as your lamentable pride in having been been chosen to service DS officers. To have your body used and abused by the Empire’s finest was, at that moment, the pinnacle of your existence. Oh, my dark nova. You had no inkling of your potential greatness.

I had seen thousands of women many considered beautiful over the last two decades. They were nothing more in my eyes than the compilation of the genes that humans find physically appealing, and their attributes meant nothing to me. Many foolishly thought they could persuade me, with their supposed allure and their offers of sex, to spare their lives. Needless to say, they never did. But you Lylla, with your scarlet hair, your pale skin and your aura as black as a Tatooine horizon at midnight… you possessed a beauty I had never encountered before. A preternatural beauty. A Sithly beauty.

You dared look up at me, the only one in that hangar who did. You didn’t know of me, did you? Had you never heard the tales? Had you even known my name? I do not know, even now, for I have never asked. But when I looked at your face, I saw no fear there, no terror. I saw awe in the part of your lips. I heard the quickness of your breaths and the pounding of your pulse through the Force. I saw wonder in your eyes, wonder of me, as well as…interest? No one ever looked at me like that. Not since before… I became this.

But you did. And you still do, my sa’thraxxx.

I immediately had you followed. Watched. You performed your work dutifully, and played your role of the eager seductress well. Exceptionally well. Until you thought no one was watching.

I questioned the guard posted at the library. The one you solicited with the offer of oral gratification for clearance. Unlike all the others before him, he refused you, as per my orders; had he agreed to your offer, my Lylla, I would have killed him where he stood before me. He told me how you had gone from seductive to desperate, how you pleaded with him and even offered him credits to allow you in. When he refused again, he told me he saw your lip quiver before you bit it down and hurried away.

Security footage showed me where you went afterward. To a seldom-used viewing lounge a level down. I watched you light a glimmerspice joint, in spite of such actions being against regulations, and take a long, slow drag. You sank into a seat, ran pale fingers through your bobbed red hair and stared out the port. You turned your face away from the camera, but your body told me everything. The slump in your shoulders, the mournful bent of your head, the way you held the cigarette down between your knees, all betraying your hopelessness, your defeat. Caused by my orders to bar you from the library.

It was the first time I caused you pain. Even before I met you. I will never forget it nuyak kranjen, and will always cherish it.

What was there, Lylla, in that library that you so grieved? I pondered for a moment that you might be a Rebel spy. But your records showed no evidence of such an affiliation. Indeed, the examination vid conducted for serving onboard the Death Star assessed that you were wholly loyal to the Empire. That you were grateful for its protections, and that you had never eaten or slept so well once the Empire seized you from Malifino’s estate. The lie detectors embedded in the room confirmed this as well.

I saw you drop your head, and your shoulders tremble. You had begun to cry. But then you bolted out of your seat and slapped yourself across the face. Again. And again.

I understood, Lylla. How inflicting physical pain can suffocate a deeper one. But there were other ways to do so, my girl. The pain you inflict needn’t be your own to ease your own. I could teach you.

You struck yourself several more times until you panted like a thirsting animal, but you no longer cried. You cheated me even you beguiled me. I wanted to see you cry. I coveted those tears, because I knew I had caused them even if you did not. I wished to feel them drip on my cheeks as I tangled my fingers into your hair and forced your weeping eyes near mine. I longed to taste your pain. Would it be like mine, bitter and burning? Or would it be sweet on my tongue and in my mind, coming from a delicious creature as you?

You straightened, tall as a willin tree and as graceful. You inhaled your cigarette, blew the smoke through your nose. The smoke curled around you, glowing in the faint light from the stars outside. You smoothed the black mesh body sleeve down your long body, unashamed of its indecency. I saw you wipe your eyes and stare out into space once more. I could not hear your mind, but I could see your face again. I saw hatred stiffen the lines of your mouth and tenacity harden your eyes. 

In that moment, I craved you. To thrust into you, crush you in my arms and under my weight, to devour you, to feel you. I wanted to hurt you, to hear your sweet cries in my ears. But I did not want to break you. No Lylla, quite the opposite. I wanted to experience you, because only suffering reveals the true self. Would you crumble under my strength? Or would you challenge me, fight me, even knowing you could never win? Or would you enjoy me, as women could with men? Would you use your prowess and share your passion with me? Perhaps even… kiss me? Could you see me like that, Sa’thraxxx?

As simply a man? 

Did you never wonder why, the next time you tried to enter the library, you were allowed access without refusal? Without having to offer any favors for it? I do not doubt you did, but you didn’t know it was I who had cleared you. I wanted to see what it was that you wanted so desperately in there. Why you would offer yourself in such a degrading way.

I had had the cameras set on the most comfortable seating area in the library. I was pleased that you took it. I had ordered the guard to allow you to stay as long as you wanted so I could witness what you read. I watched you rush through the aisles of cylinders, grabbing without looking at them, until your arms were full. You spilled the cylinders onto the viewer table, and I perused the titles. I realized then that there was no one piece of information you were seeking, no one subject that interested you, but a plethora of texts and literature. You had, truly, just wanted to read. To learn. Anything. Everything.

Then you sat at your station, shoved one into the viewer, and started reading. The first cylinder was a history of the Goroth Alpha system, the first history ever recorded by a sentient Galactic race. You read it for over three hours, even paging back and reading certain parts again. I watched the subtle changes in your face, the way you raised your brows and exhaled incredulous breaths at various passages. I saw you devour it with your eyes. The second cylinder was, of all ridiculous things in a military library, a romantic novella. Before I realized it, I chuckled with you at the preposterous plot and inane antics of the protagonists. I watched you shake your head and cringe even as you laughed at the foolishness.

The third and last for that evening was a strategic history of the Battle of Salient, led by none other than Tarkin himself. This was when I watched you with the utmost attention and first realized the full potential of your intellect. You were entranced by it, entirely glued to the text. I saw you curse and mimic the wish to have something to write on, to take notes. Instead, you just read a passage over and over again, memorizing it. I saw you want to understand, to know the mind and maneuvers behind such a bloodbath of a campaign.

I was already fully aware that you were Tarkin’s favorite whore aboard, having received the reports from my spies about your visits to his quarters. Tarkin had had a number of lovers over the span of the Empire; Admiral Natasi Daala was one, Ysanne Isaard was said to be another. Even Orson Krennic was rumored to have succumbed to him at one point. But a conscripted pleasure slave of no rank, of no influence and with no formal education, one not even of the elite Imperial courtesan caste? I did not fully understand why Tarkin would have deigned sully himself with you until that moment.

You fascinated him too. You challenged him. He had seen your intelligence, your drive. He even conversed with you. He saw it in you before I did. And called you back to have you, again and again. I became angry, my girl. I seethed with jealousy for the first time in twenty years. Because I know Tarkin. I know his need to control. He wanted to tame you, to break you.

I wanted to refine you. To forge you.

It was then I decided to summon you to me. But not that night. I watched your eyes droop and wander after hours of reading the viewer. You yawned and set your high-boned cheek into your hand. No, I wanted you refreshed. Collected. Ready to meet with me.

You arrived the next day, dressed to entice me. While you wore it well, the outfit was far too suggestive for my tastes. Perhaps common men found such show of skin tantalizing, but I did not. I would dress you differently. Elegantly. Modestly, for then only I would know what you truly looked like underneath. Nevertheless, it was a provocative ensemble, obviously one of your own choosing and not Imperial issue. I knew then that you did nothing without purpose, even in dressing. But what was your purpose, kranjen? What was it that you wanted from me that you wore such a thing in my presence?

The answer came easily enough, from your lips and through the Force, without guile or deception. You wanted me. Not my power nor influence nor favor. Just me. As fiercely as I wanted you. Then you did challenge me, insolently tossed a verbal barb back at me. I knew then you did not fear me. My loins tightened and burned for the first time in years, I grew hard under my codpiece. I didn’t know I still could. I walked away from you, because if I didn’t, I would have taken you right there. Pinned you against the viewport, torn your salacious clothing, buried myself inside of you, felt you tremble in my arms. I wanted to make you come, over and over again through the Force, and have you beg for my mercy. But I did not act upon the impulse, because if I did…I might have killed you.

So instead, I set you to a task. The first of many. To prove to me that you were deserving of my desire, and of my mercy. I wished to see if you were worthy to be spared before I destroyed the Death Star and everyone on it. You had shown me your intelligence, your strength, and your will.

It was time to show me your cruelty.

I knew it was there, simmering under your cool poise. Admiral Motti’s aide was one of my spies, and her reports indicated that his… tastes… were well entrenched in the sadomasochistic. And that you were the only pleasure slave onboard who could satisfy him. This was proven fact when at a meeting of the Moffs, Motti took his seat slowly. Carefully. And winced when he settled in. A sound came out of my vocoder, garbled and diffused, that no one in the room recognized or comprehended as laughter. What had you used on him, Lylla? A strap? A whip? Your bare hands? Your teeth? When I tasked you with interrogating the Rebel prisoner, I made sure you were provided with a wide choice of implements.

That prisoner had been close to breaking as it was under my own hands. But just as he was about to crack, I exited the cell and left him. For you. And you did not disappoint, my scarlet star. You had murder in your eyes and glee in your soul as you slashed that barbed flogger down the boy’s back, your lips curled in a drooling snarl. You showed me yet another part of yourself.

The killer.

As I watched you tease, mutilate and toy with that Rebel pup through the cell’s camera, I sent a message to the Imperial Registrar of Citizenship from the detection block’s computer stating that Malifino’s tax debt had been repaid, to release you from Imperial indenture, and to grant you full Imperial citizenship. Seconds later, I received the response:

_To the Illustrious Lord Darth Vader, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces:_

_In order to complete your request to grant Imperial Comfort Thrall ID 6790237-1 full Imperial citizenship, we require a complete name. Please respond._

I glanced at the monitor again, and saw you caress the boy’s face and coo in his ear just before you gripped his genitals and twisted with all of your strength. As his screams spilled from the speakers in the detention control center, I found myself typing this name:

_Lylla Sa’thraxxx. I presume that is sufficient, Director?_

The response seconds later: _Affirmative, Lord Vader. Imperial Comfort Thrall ID Number 6790237-1 is now officially named Lylla Sa’thraxxx and is granted full Imperial citizenship. Glory to the Empire._

Someday I will tell you why I chose that name, my dark nova. That day is not today.

When you emerged from the prisoner’s cell, you were breathless, flushed, and still held the bloody flogger in your hand. How proud you were, and how you craved my approval. I gave it to you gladly. As well as my arm to take. Your shock did not escape my notice. I saw your eyes widen and glisten, and I smiled under my mask. I had caused you delicious tears again Sa’thraxxx, and even if they were not born of pain, they were for me nonetheless.

Do you understand now, my Dark Bride of the Sith? From that moment on, the cruelty of the galaxy, of existence itself was no longer worthy of your tears.

Only I am.


End file.
